Fibres

Frances Poet

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781848428461
• eBook ISBN: 9781788502726
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

'We were two weans playing at wee hooses… Now we're both paying the price.'

Jack is proud of his work at the Clyde shipyards. His wife, Beanie, who is nursing him through asbestosis, thinks he's a fool. But the real test of their marriage comes when they discover that the dusty overalls Jack brought home for Beanie to wash have poisoned her too.

Meanwhile their daughter, Lucy, is struggling; will she be held back by her parents' experience, or will she have the courage to allow romance to blossom with Pete?

Frances Poet's play Fibres is a big-hearted, hilarious drama about what it means to entwine our lives with another. A story told by four resilient, witty Glaswegian characters, the play asks can we ever cut the cords that bind us – and who will catch us if we do?

The play toured Scotland in 2019, in a co-production between Stellar Quines Theatre Company and the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow.

Snow

A mountain of clothes, crumpled and neglected.

In front of it stand LUCY and PETE and BEANIE and JACK all facing the audience. Snow is falling on them.

LUCY. It’s snowing! And he says it like he’s a seven-year-old or something. Wide-eyed looking up at the sky. Total joy. And then he looks at me. And it’s like somebody has pressed mute on the sweaty party in our office above. And I don’t know this guy. Not really. And he doesn’t know me. But we’re breathing together as the snow falls like little angel kisses on our faces.

Both of us totally switched on. And I lean into him. He touches his hand to my face and it feels… like goosebumps and I know –

BEANIE. He’s going to propose.

LUCY. He’s going to kiss me. And then I’ll be his.

BEANIE. I know he’s going to propose because we’ve agreed we’ll get married. He’s got the okay from my da and everything so… I just don’t know when. And we’re walking home from the pictures, hand in hand and it starts snowing and I think. Now. Now would be nice. And I slow down a little because he’ll have me back to my ma’s door before we know it and the moment will have passed. So I’m dawdling. And he’s rabbiting on about the car Steve McQueen was driving in the picture and the snow’s melting on my hair and dripping down the neck of my dress and I’m thinking, it’s passing, the moment is passing. Come on, Jack.

LUCY. Mum and Dad got engaged in the snow…

BEANIE. Come on. Come on.

JACK. It’s like being in a cunting snow globe.

LUCY. I don’t know why I do it. I stroke my hand along the wall. And I shove a fistful of snow in his face.

JACK. ‘Snowball!’

PETE. It always snows at Christmas.

LUCY. He looks so shocked. Expecting a wee kiss and now the ice is dripping off his face. He looks like he might actually cry and… I’m off. Pegging it away from the black-and-white-movie perfection.

PETE. In films anyway. Doesn’t it? Christmas and snow go together like… well, two things that go together. Like buckets and spades, haggis and neeps, humanity and the crippling knowledge that we all die alone. If the air is full of anything at Christmas, it’s supposed to be snow.

BEANIE. I’ve stopped walking completely by now and finally he clocks it and falls silent. I nod at him and the penny drops and he fumbles about in his pocket for a while to get out the ring his mother’s given him for me. He gets down on one knee and says, ‘Beanie, I plight thee my troth,’ which was an odd way of putting it but I got what he meant. I said yes and we had a little kiss and then he walked me home. Not quite like the movies, but it was… nice.

LUCY. I run and I run until I’m miles away from the kiss that could have been and the colleague I’ve fancied for the best part of three years. I’m cold and wet and I’m a fucking idiot. And I need to be with people who can help me understand why I’m like this, why I run when I should stay and all of a sudden I’m at a door, letting myself into the warm safe cocoon of my childhood home like I’m a teenager again. But one step in, I know my parents are rowing. Neither of them says a word but Mum is letting off a round of tutting like machine-gun fire as she irons my dad’s underpants, while he lobs a retaliatory grenade of silence her way.

And it’s colder in here than it is outside and I understand everything more clearly than I ever hoped to. And all I want to do is to quietly let myself out again and step back into the snow.

JACK. A couple of the men are lobbing snowballs at us. One lands on this fella who’s working, and he’s none too pleased. He brushes it off his overalls, all ‘stop pissing about’ and ‘what are you, a pair a kids?’ And they’re shouting at him to lighten up. They lob one at me. I catch it and chuck it back, clocks one of them right in the face. Wipes the smile off him for sure.

But it’s a laugh. Group of men mucking about together and I think, this is better than school this. This is gonna be okay. My wages in my pocket after a hard day’s graft. This is alright.

Sun’s blazing outside and in here we’re having a snowball fight. White stuff everywhere, falling like snow.

The snow stops being beautiful and becomes oppressive. There’s too much of it and it’s getting in LUCY’s mouth and eyes. The mood has changed.

LUCY. This isn’t snow?

JACK. Just looks like snow. Not the real thing.

LUCY. It’s not even wet.

JACK. It’s the dry stuff you’ve to watch out for.

LUCY. What is this?

PETE. Expecting snow, ash is what I got.

JACK. You breathe it in and it takes hold of you.

LUCY. What the fuck is this?

PETE. Seven years old waiting for Christmas and everything is falling down around me except for snow.

JACK. Kills you from the inside.

LUCY. Get it off me!

BEANIE. Look at the state of you.

BEANIE takes JACK’s coat from him.

LUCY. No…

BEANIE is shaking the dust off JACK’s jacket.

Don’t do that, Mum. Don’t breathe it in!

Introducing Beanie

BEANIE (putting on a pair of latex medical gloves). It’s the gloves. I’m not squeamish about the dressings or the yellow fluid draining from Jack’s chest. I manage the clamps fine. I even quite like watching the vacuum in the bottle start to draw the fluid down the tube. Like squeezing a really ripe spot. It’s the latex gloves. I can’t bear the touch of them. Pulling them on to my hands, tight around every finger. Feels like I’m putting on a… [condom] well, you know. I never liked touching those either. I know why you have to use them. The gloves. We haven’t worried about the other things for years. Risk of infection – I’ve read up on it. Got to wear the right equipment for any job. Jack’s helped us both learn that the hard way. I wear the damn gloves and throw them off soon as I can. But this morning the phone rings soon as I’ve finished putting the clamps on. So I’m still wearing the gloves when Dr Sleeman tells me they’ve got the results of my chest X-ray and could I make an appointment to come in and see her…

And I know then that it’s got me too.

She pulls off the gloves, disgusted by them, and throws them to the floor.

Introducing Lucy

LUCY. ‘What’s the difference between a woman and a washing machine? The washing machine doesn’t ask you for a cuddle after you dump a load in it.’

Overheard one of the technicians tell that one. Doesn’t make any sense. It assumes blokes actually do their own washing. They don’t. The women do. Every relationship without fail. I lived with a couple at uni and we all washed our own stuff. They get together, a few years pass, they have kids – now she washes clothes for five people, says her life is one long cycle of moving clothes from one place to another. I’ve never heard of a single relationship where the guy does the washing. Not one.

Not having to wash somebody else’s shit is the best thing about not being in a relationship.

What’s the difference between a woman and a washing machine? There is no fucking difference.

Introducing Pete

PETE. I’m having a really shitty day.

Long pause. Eventually he realises everybody is waiting for him to sa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Contents
• Original Production
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication
• Characters
• Fibres
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information